Kamakhya Temple

01The pitha in the rock

When Bhagwan Shiva wandered the worlds carrying the body of Sati after Daksha’s yajna, Bhagwan Vishnu’s Sudarshana severed it, and where each part fell a pitha arose. At Nilachal the Kalika Purana and the Yogini Tantra place the yoni-mandala, the seat of the Devi’s creative power. You go down a few dark, wet steps into the garbhagriha. There, under flowers and red cloth, water rises from a natural fissure in the stone, and that is the Devi. The ten Mahavidyas have their own shrines on the same hill: Tara, Bhuvaneshvari, Bagalamukhi, Kamala and the rest.

02Ruin and the Koch rebuilding

By the early 16th century the old stone temple lay in ruins; Assamese tradition blames the iconoclast Kalapahar, while some historians point to the Bengal Sultanate’s raids into Kamarupa. The Koch founder Vishwa Singha found the pitha again among the jungle, and his son Naranarayan, with his general and brother Chilarai, had the temple raised anew. An inscription inside records the work in Shaka 1487, that is 1565 CE. The beehive-shaped shikhara over a stone base, the Nilachal style, dates from this rebuilding. The Ahom kings later took up the patronage: Siva Singha in the 18th century settled priests and land on the temple.

03Ambubachi

Each year in the month of Ashadha, around the third week of June, the doors close for three days. The Devi is in her annual rajasvala, her season, and no puja is done anywhere in the temple. On the fourth day the doors open, and pieces of red cloth that covered the pitha are given out as prasad. Sadhus from every akhara, tantrik sadhakas and lakhs of householders camp on the hill for the Ambubachi Mela. Durga Puja and the Manasa Puja of Shravan are the other great days.

The life of this place